Identification of cellular targets to enhance virotherapy

Ovarian cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in females in the UK. An estimated 125 women in the UK will be diagnosed every week with the disease and 4,300 will die each year. While survival rates for many other types of cancer have improved significantly, ovarian cancer remains a challenge to clinicians because the disease is often diagnosed at late stage and the tumours frequently become resistant to chemotherapy. 

In research funded by Wellbeing of Women, Dr Morrison and her team have made a significant breakthrough in developing a potentially more effective, targeted treatment for ovarian cancer using virotherapy, where adenovirus, the virus that causes the common cold, is delivered directly into tumours to kill only cancer cells. However, refinements still need to be made to the system before clinical trials can take place in patients. Wellbeing of Women is therefore extending funding for this groundbreaking work to investigate whether new drugs may improve virotherapy.  In this highly innovative new project she proposes to find out more about how viruses kill cells and to identify key proteins in the cells, called kinases, which affect the cell-killing capability of viruses. Using state-of-the art screening methodologies and a new scientific tool called RNA interference (siRNA), the team will be able to test the role of each candidate protein in virus cell killing. 

Once those proteins have been identified, they can be targeted in clinical trials to determine whether blocking the proteins will enhance the virus killing of cancer cells for the treatment of ovarian cancer. This will enable us to design new drugs either to enhance virotherapy or to kill ovarian cancer cells directly.

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